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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: US academic Samantha Power predicts an Obama victory in the US Sen Barack Obama will not just receive the Democratic nomination, he will become the 44th President of the United States, so says Samantha Power, the Pulitzer prize winning author, journalist, and academic, who is coming to Galway to read at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature. Samantha Power is the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy, at the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at the John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard. In 2005 and 2006 she worked in the office of Sen Barak Obama and later served for a time as a voluntary foreign policy advisor to him in his campaign to become the Democratic candidate for the US presidency. An Irish-American Ms Power was born in 1970 and spent most of her childhood growing up in Dublin before moving to the US with her mother in 1979. Being ‘Irish-American’ is a “hugely important” part of her identity - but with a difference. “When people think Irish-America the identity that comes to mind is of the Irish-American Clan and all that goes with it,” Ms Power tells me during our Wednesday afternoon interview. “My identity was shaped by spending time in both places. In Ireland I feel thoroughly American and in the US I feel very Irish.” She is looking forward to coming back to Ireland to read at Cúirt and catching up with her relatives. “I’m going to come to Ireland a few days before Cúirt and hang out with my cousin Michele who lives in Galway and taking in as much of the festival as I can,” she says. Cúirt reading At Cúirt, Ms Power will read from her latest book, Chasing The Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World, in the Town Hall Theatre, on Wednesday April 23 at 3.30pm. The book is a biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Brazilian UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who was killed in the Canal Hotel Bombing in Iraq along with 21 other people in 2003. During his life Mr de Mello worked with refugees; was involved in the clearing of land mines in Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and from 1999 to 2002, he successfully oversaw East Timor’s transition from Indonesian province to independence. Ms Power was a friend of Mr de Mello’s and felt that the Brazilian’s life and work held many vital lessons and answers to today’s most pressing geo-political issues “When Sergio died I felt a real sense of loss for the ‘most important man you never heard of’, as he has been called,” she says. “This was the ‘go to’ guy for nation building, conflict resolution, human rights, and all this wealth of knowledge and experience was gone. “We’re missing shepherds in areas like terrorism and global warming. Most of our models are 20th century models - often military ones - and not the right models for the challenges we face. Here though was this ‘pragmatic idealist’ and talisman for the 21st Century and I wanted to retrieve the lessons and the stories from his past so we could short-circuit the learning and sometimes mistakes he had to go through over 35 years by walking with him.” Sen Barack Obama There is huge interest in Ms Power’s visit to Galway owing to the time she spent working with Sen Barack Obama, first as a member of his office and later as an voluntary foreign policy advisor on his campaign. For many, Cúirt will be a chance to hear from someone who knows and has worked with the most charismatic and exciting politician to enter the world stage in at least a generation. Unfortunately, Ms Power had to resign from her post in the Obama campaign in March after referring to rival candidate Hillary Clinton as “a monster” during an interview with The Scotsman. Did she feel cheated and humiliated by the paper when it published the remark, which Ms Power expressly stated was, and was even quoted in the newspaper as saying was, “off the record”? “I was much more focused on my stupidity and I was a bit more surprised that I lost my temper,” she says. “I received a call from the campaign during the interview and got some bad news and I let loose. I’m angrier with myself than the journalist. Humiliated? Sure. I’ve been working a long time on weighty foreign policy issues, never made the news and it’s disappointing that this got the better of me.” Nonetheless she remains an ardent supporter of Sen Obama and is confident that he will secure the Democratic nomination and win the US Presidential election. “That’s not emotion talking,” she says. “We’re talking about someone who only comes along once in a lifetime. I never met anybody with that combination of intellectual rigour and worldliness before. “When I first met him I was struck by how comfortable he was with questions about the world and he was hungry, not just to be a senator, but to move beyond the Bush era and put forward an alternative vision of how the US should conduct itself in the world, and I thought here was a man who could do that.” Ms Power feels that any Democratic candidate will face a tough and “unbelievably challenging candidate” in the Republican’s Sen John McCain, but the desire for real change in America, she believes, will give Sen Obama “the push he needs”. “The turn-out for both Sen Clinton and Sen Obama, who have run on the message that the troops must be pulled out of Iraq, shows huge numbers of people share that view. Records for donations have been broken in terms of small donors. Voting records have also been broken, and this is all happening on the Democratic side. “It is in America’s interest to close Guantanamo, to stop torture, and to bring a conclusion to Iraq. The message is obviously getting through as John McCain - although he believes we should stay in Iraq - is the only Republican who has stood up to President Bush on torture, as he experienced that as a soilder himself in Vietnam. He is also more receptive to working with our allies and international institutions. “Sen McCain’s positions on Iraq, Iran, and the ‘War on Terror’ can sound a lot like the Bush approach. But the early polls and focus groups indicate that voters are not convinced that a more militaristic approach to dealing with terrorism is what America needs or wants right now. “It will be close but if I was a betting woman I would have money on Sen Obama.” Tickets for Samantha Power’s reading are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777. For the full Cúirt programme see www.galway artscentre.ie
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#1. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
As I said on another thread, it will be a miracle if Obama makes it to 200 electoral votes. These people who think he is electable are not on the same planet as I am. I say this as someone who is not a fan, really, of any of them. I realize McInsane will probably end civilization. But that's the way I see this playing out.
“I would give no thought of what the world might say of me, if I could only transmit to posterity the reputation of an honest man.” - Sam Houston
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